I mean seriously, Epic is rocking it with UE3 right now. It is pretty much the biggest 3rd party engine being used by developers, with more joining on every week. They are in a very strong position right now, and I highly doubt they will sell to M$. It offers them really no benefits at all, and a whole lot of negatives. If Epic is publicly traded, then the stock might get an additional boost from the speculation, but anyone who would buy stock in Epic knows that it is a bad idea, and more money can be made by remaining independent.
Yeah this is what I was saying with my comments about EA, I dont see EA staying on getting their engines if that was the case since they do have other options. Thats basically like handing the opposition a heap of money straight up, Epic is alot more neutral in terms of motives. Then again EA publish games on windows and xbox as well but I think that situation is alittle different than directly forking over money.
MS just doesnt have a great name to be taking on the middleware market, see sure they make API's and hardware but if you start adding engines in. Well I can see the anti-trust comments already (whoops), Epic just wont get in that position as easily because of its independance from compies such as EA, MS, Blizzard/Activision etc.
Sure Epic could easily become a publisher on UE3 titles if it wanted to take that route or do a steam like system but once you add MS to the equation then a steam like system automatically becomes a live system. Sure thats good for MS but considering other companies have their own system like EA it does make you wonder.
From a game point of view this could make sense so perhaps there is something in that, we all know cliffys stance on the xbox Im sure. It could help bring ports between xbox and PC/windows quicker but then again it could hurt since a game might not make it to PS3 like Gears.
I just think Epic is in the perfect position where it is and it does amaze me how they manage to juggle all these publishers, developers and hardware makers, while staying on good terms with the others. I think the industry is just too volatile for something like this to actually work and pay off as big as MS would hope.
Then again there is alot of people with 360's and alot of UE3 games on that platform also! But hey this is probably just rumour mill stuff as usual. With some of Epic's (I wont name) comments of late its kinda obvious to see where this came from.
